


a six-eyed glare upon your soul

by wanderNavi



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: more like a deconstruction, soulmarks but not predominantly romantically, why doesn't robin's mom have a character tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2019-12-07 18:07:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18238421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderNavi/pseuds/wanderNavi
Summary: “I already have a mark,” Robin reminds her mother who doesn’t seem to understand, even though it’s been well over two years of this nonsense already.“Your brand’s different,” says Modron who’s given up trying to explain seven months in. “It’s not a soulmark. It’s not. The brand isn’t something from a person. Oh, if only you could have words come in, something straight forward.”





	a six-eyed glare upon your soul

When Robin is about eleven years old and full of Chon’sin cuisine, her mother starts regularly inspecting her skin for the marks to come in. Robin faces this with the universal impatience of children, squirming out of Modron’s hold and shrieking while they’re changing, all five syllable “ _mo-o-om_ ” and misunderstanding.

“I already have a mark,” Robin reminds her mother who doesn’t seem to understand, even though it’s been well over two years of this nonsense already.

“Your brand’s different,” says Modron who’s given up trying to explain seven months in. “It’s not a soulmark. It’s not. The brand isn’t something from a person. Oh, if only you could have words come in, something straight forward.”

“Roxanne has pictures. She’s got a stag,” Robin mutters.

“Yes, and gods help that girl.”

* * *

Emmeryn turns Chrom’s hand from one side to the other, frowning at the mess of colors blotting over the back. The forms haven’t settled yet, won’t for a few months yet, and she lets go with a sigh. He fidgets and asks, “Any idea of who it could be?”

“It’s too early yet,” she says.

And too vague; it could be some noble house that will become Chrom’s greatest supporter in the court, or a foreign ruler rising to challenge him, or a comrade in the knightly ranks, or even the rare possibility of love.

Her own mark points to their now dead father and the legacy he left behind for Emmeryn to shoulder and tame and repair. His personal crest burns at the base of the back of her neck, a shadow she will always walk away from but never detach from. In life and death, his actions have scarred Ylisse. Emmeryn’s mark – of ruler and of parent – are common, but she prays Chrom’s ties won’t be to the near bloody past of their father as well. A root reaching to the hero days of Marth and legends would be better.

As expected, a few months later, the blobs thin and solidify, and Chrom regularly peeks under his gloves to watch the colors deepening into a warm purple and a looping, slanted script. But ten years old and without a clue, he has no idea what to make of his mark.

One afternoon, he’s ostensibly supposed to be watching Lissa who’s taken to running up and down through the gardens in convoluted plots of let’s-pretend that Chrom can’t keep up with. She’s been damaging some of the flowerbeds and Emmeryn asked him to prevent further casualties, but Sully’s family is visiting Ylisstol and he’s more preoccupied with the clattering clash of wooden practice swords.

Once they wear themselves all out, flopping onto the grass and sipping cool, sweet drinks, Chrom yanks his gloves off his sweating hands. Sully whistles, a trick she’s just learned and ready to show off at every chance, when she sees his mark and says, “Gonna have a hell of a story to go with _that_ line.”

He grimaces, but as usual, Sully’s right. Lissa rolls over to peak at his hand as well; her marks won’t come in for a few years yet and she’s drawn to soulmark discussions with a young, naïve, romantic hope fed by ballads, wishing for something to offset the Exalt brand’s elusiveness.

“Do you think they’re first words or last words?” Chrom asks.

“Sound more like last words to me. ‘May we meet again in a better life.’ Sorry, Chrom. Look’s like you’re going to really let your soulmate down.”

“Hey!” He shoves his gloves back on, flushing with indignation. “You don’t know that for sure.”

Sully laughs and drains her cup. “All the more reason to start real training soon. Come on, one more round.”

For the most part, Chrom tries to push his soulmark out of mind.

* * *

Robin turns fifteen on one of the southern continents, picking up the local language with a bullheaded fervor, though the shopkeepers still know her better as “that kid with the pidgin way of talking,” and Modron gives up looking for a soulmark to appear on her daughter. It’s five years late and if it’s not coming, it’s not coming.

Her own mark aches, a dense splash of blooming, off-white date palm flowers cascading down her spine, between her shoulder blades. Validar would bring her plates and small boxes of the sweet dried fruit when he visited her in those early years. They talked into the late night, about treatises and poetry, fingers sticky from plucking the treats off the dried stems and sometimes in bursts of childishness, she’d lick her fingers clean and laughter would stumble out of him, as if surprised.

Modron hasn’t eaten a single date in almost a decade.

Robin more than makes up for Modron’s exhausted lack of worry, now that she knows more than she did a couple years ago, about fell dragons and vessels and sacrifices. She’d spent a few weeks after that loaded discussion casting suspicious eyes on everyone walking in the streets. Was that woman hiding daggers and spell sheets under the layered folds of her skirt? Was that man’s indifferent gaze hiding watchful eyes scanning for glimpse of brands and marks? Were those children more sinister than inexperienced pickpockets? But Modron snaps her out of the paranoia, “A more _reasonable_ level of caution please, dear.”

Her mother isn’t able to stop her rubbing at the brand, digging the pad of her thumb over her skin and trying to blot out the unblinking stares, one eye at a time.

“It does make some sense,” Robin admits between bites of soft chewy bread. “The Grimleal has an overwhelming effect on my life, considering everything so far has been about avoiding them. There’s also the whole vessel of death business. And I’ll always be watching my back for them.”

“Even Ylisse’s Exalts, branded as Naga’s chosen as you are branded, have separate soulmarks that form at the proper age. What’s odd is that your brand appeared at birth, not while you came of age. The implications worry me since this mark also designates you for the _dragon_ not a person,” Modron says.

Robin swallows in thought and moves her knight further up the chess board. “Well, it’s not like we have experts we can ask for answers.”

Modron’s bishop darts out and pins Robin’s knight and rook and her mother agrees, “No, we don’t.”

Still, Robin can’t help entertaining the fantasies between rounds of chess and memorizing magic spells and sparring matches. Her hands move through the steady routine of chores – tidying the latest temporary home and folding clothing – and her mind wanders into what if she _did_ have a proper soulmark like Modron’s flowers or that waitress’s looping words or the birdkeeper’s shifting trails of colors? What if Robin was able to peek at her ankle and gather reassurance from a scrawled “good work” or something as generic? Or maybe instead on her shoulder or her hip, she’d have a twisting image of symbolism like the tattoos on the sailors at the harbor she chats with every week.

Maybe her soulmark would fall into the common category of a parent mark, tied to her mother who has done so much to keep her off the Grimleal’s sacrificial altar. Maybe when Robin is older, she’ll finally be able to settle into one land for good and her mark will be the blandly ubiquitous ruler’s mark, living a life structured and only possible due to the local court of law. Maybe she could even finally go to the hallowed academies, to learn in the great libraries among thinkers and mentors and bear the crest of a great teacher, the student’s mark and among the highest honor.

All of these are merely fantasies. In the end, her life comes back to Grima, always Grima. Of course, her mark is her brand and her brand is her mark.

* * *

Lissa’s nearly crying when she comes sprinting out of lessons and into Chrom and Emmeryn’s alarmed arms, gasping, “Look, _look_.”

Sunset orange and purple curls of color spiral out from the inner wrist of her left hand. “Oh!” Emmeryn exclaims and in his excitement, Chrom grabs Lissa in an all-encompassing hug and overestimates his strength, lifting her clear off the ground.

The marks distract Lissa for weeks on end as she tries rushing the settling process with rampant speculation, mouth running nonstop with wild ideas that Frederick listens to with a patient and weary ear. The tutors try without success to settle _her_ down in classes and eventually poor Claude gives up teaching etiquette and debate and thrusts a thin leather-bound journal at her, declaring, “If these few weeks are going to waste, then at least practice your penmanship and observational skills. Fill this book with notes on your soulmark, how it changes, and what category you believe it falls into. Don’t forget to support your stances.”

Lissa snatches up the journal and sprints out the doorway before Claude finishes speaking and Chrom awkwardly watches him collapse over the table, palms digging into his tied eyes and messing up his already chaotic hair. “Uh,” Chrom says. “Am I also excused from classes?”

A wounded noise leaks out of Claude who thunks his head onto the dark wood paneling, abandoning all semblance of courtly posture. The reply drags out of him, “Yes.”

Chrom slams his chair back, nearly forgets to slide it back under the table, and runs out after Lissa before she losses the notebook in some crazy nook of the castle, like the tower spire where he accidentally found a full family of dolls a few days ago.

The distractions run for another fortnight, until Emmeryn finally returns to the castle and swoops down on Chrom and Lissa hiding in a dusty storage room from Frederick trying to drag them back to classes. She sighs when she finds them asks, “Lissa, may I see your soulmark?”

“It doesn’t seem to be settling,” Chrom says with worry. It’s already been bad enough, the whispers and the snide words he half understands that he hears about Lissa’s lack of brand, about the virtue of the late queen, about the legitimacy of his younger sister. If people also start gossiping about her mark never settling, forever unformed and juvenile, it’ll crush her.

Emmeryn runs gentle fingers over the sunset gradient shrinking and expanding on Lissa’s arm and says, “No, I actually think it’s fully formed now. Looks like you have a rarer form of the mark, Lissa. One that shifts in response to the environment and emotions of your soulmate. These are harder to interpret, but usually come as a matching pair. It’s beautiful.”

Matched marks are more than rare, there are more pure diamonds the size of Chrom’s thumbnail than there are matched marks. Beside him, Lissa’s mouth falls open in astonishment. “Really?”

“Yes,” Emmeryn reassures, then grips her hand more firmly. “And what’s this I hear about you two skipping lessons?”

* * *

Chrom learns to stop worrying over his soulmark and the identity of his soulmate. As the years go on, he resigns himself to how he’ll never hear the words until the end of his relationship with his soulmate. Holding every friendship and alliance against the heavy weight of his expectations and equal parts anticipation and dread are gross missteps and undermine the genuine cordiality of his interactions if he keeps judging his interactions by whether _this_ one is the one. Gods willing, he has a long and fulfilling life between now and when the prophecy of his soulmark comes due.

The gloves stay on and he steers discussions about his soulmark away from the topic. The newly established Shepherds learn to avoid the matter, for what use does speculation provide when there are rounds to embark on and training to complete?

He spends an ever-increasing number of days on the road, marveling at the unconstructed freedom of miles of open paths, the clear skies unmarred by fireplace smoke rising over the castle town, the chilly sea breezes laden with salt, sights and sounds and smells previously unknown, all these aspects of Ylisse’s recovering splendor. Among Ylisse’s citizens, he sees the marks of parents and children, of teachers and students, of ruler and subject, of friends and foe, so many iterations and so many repetitions.

His father’s mark drowns the older generation, the people his family failed and sent to death and lives of hardship. Emmeryn’s mark glows from the people too, of a loyal land revitalized and relearning the radiant power of firm compassion.

And Chrom notices with apprehension, swatches of his mark crop up as well.

Chrom will never vie for the throne and crown, nor does he foresee a role that will set his influence across so many subjects, _young_ subjects, almost … almost fitting the requirements of a draft, of _soldiers_ , a certain steely bearing and tenacity of life Chrom can recognize even in his peripheral vision and he blocks out all thoughts of what could shatter Emmeryn’s hard-earned peace and revive the Ylissian military.

Like his fruitless, wandering thoughts about his soulmate’s identity, Chrom sets aside those inquires and continues traveling and serving his people with the Shepherds. Let that be his mark on the land.

Then one day, he stumbles across a woman passed out in a field by herself for gods know how long in the midafternoon golden glow.

* * *

No one outright asks about Robin’s soulmark, thank the gods, and she’s not volunteering any thoughts on the matter. She suspects the sharp twists on her right hand are her soulmark, but the same blocked off depth in her erased memories that hides the foundations of her tactical and fighting skills shudders at the thought. There aren’t any other marks though, so Robin can’t think of a better explanation.

Still, Sumia bites her lips to hold the obvious questions back while they trade lurid fictional books back and forth. Sully spars with Robin and watches her shrug off layers with an assessing eye and Frederick watches the same with a more suspicious one. Virion circles around the matter like a cobra and Donnel shrugs with a simple disregard. The Feroxian contingent come the closest to addressing the matter directly with Flavia smirking, “No need to hide,” and Basilio laughing and thumping a heavy hand on her shoulder, “It’s a person’s highest pride and highest shame!” while Lon’qu simply runs away.

Chrom’s gloved hands pick up a fresh cup of tea and he says, “I hope no one’s been bothering you over the matter of soulmarks.”

“No one has, though it’s natural that curiosity should arise,” says Robin and she taps an intersection of valleys on the map. “The bulk of our forces can take the higher ground with the speed granted by pegasus and cavalry. A vanguard of infantry then lures the enemy forces into the valley by pretending to retreat. Once the valley fills, we sweep in from their rear to cut off support and charge down the slopes on their sides, walling them in. Our archers stay on the ridges to pick off pegasus riders, but we hold the sky supremacy and an attempted enemy retreat by air shouldn’t pose a threat.”

“Hmm, alright. And what’s this scheme of yours for the pegasus knights to learn bombardment techniques?”

And that’s the extent of Chrom’s interest in the topic.

“Romance’s just so rarely the reason in the army, ya know,” Donnel explains when Robin takes a break from testing if he can learn to use every weapon. “Most people, it’s their commander or fellas. The ‘mount of guys I know with Chrom as their soulmark would take more than my hands to count. ‘Course, he’s also the next in line for Exalt, which helps. Can come from the smallest of things too sometimes, there’s an old vet back home, got the battalion rank of a Plegian soldier that missed by a hair. Had it hit, he woulda been dead. Gave him the truest fright of his life and got ‘im reconsidering stuff.”

Robin passes her canteen of water to him which he takes with a quick _thanks_.

He wipes the excess moisture off his lips while handing it back to her and says, “Yeah, I wouldn’t think too hard about it. These nobles, not to be rude or anything, but they’ve been listenin’ to too many romantic tales. Hells, I doubt most people know the full extent of what their soulmarks mean until they’re lying on their deathbeds and maybe not even then.”

“Thanks, Donnel,” Robin says with a laugh. “Now, let’s see if you can increase your distance with the bow. I’d love to rub it in Virion’s face to keep him in line.”

* * *

Chrom catches Lucina’s eyes widening in confusion when he takes off his gloves to inspect their swords with the finer precision of bare hands. He glances down himself, and finding nothing remiss, looks back up and asks, “Is something wrong?”

Lucina’s hand reaches out to hesitantly touch his soulmark and in awkward confusion, she says, “That … this isn’t your soulmark as I know it.”

That’s interesting. “Haven’t we all agreed that this is technically a different timeline than yours? Or I think that’s what Robin, Miriel, and Laurent were saying, I’ll admit I didn’t understand most of that conversation.”

“Yes, but, I hadn’t thought it could affect your soulmark which stabilized years before our arrival.”

He had accepted they were last words. “Look at it this way, then we know for certain the fate you experienced can be averted. I’ve always expected to hear these words later in life, and if my mark here is different from the mark you remember, then we _are_ able to challenge our so-called destinies.”

She shifts uncomfortably and Chrom knows Robin’s still fuming from her stuttered silence on just what happened in the ruined timeline. It had been one of the few rows he and Robin ever had and just as intense as the others, though now proving longer-lived. Robin had exploded with frustration in the command tent which did nothing to muffle sound carrying out across half the base, shouting for everyone to hear and did hear, _Chrom_ could hear the shuffling clatter of action and movement outside faltering and halting as she yelled, “Just how soon were we felled in battle that neither of us had time to teach her the value of sharing intelligence! I have nearly nothing on our enemy’s motivations and actions and capabilities, I don’t have my cursed memories that I had in her timeline, and the sooner events can diverge from her experiences the better! I want her information to become obsolete, I want events to go differently because I don’t know if you’ve noticed Chrom, all of us are _dead_ in her timeline.”

“I _have_ noticed,” Chrom growled back, “But there’s no calling for forcing her through her trauma to your exceedingly rigorous requirements. Things are already different, we have the forces of the children, we have a more stable Ylisse home front, we have more success in our current campaign already.”

“Then where’s Basilio, Chrom? _Where is he?_ ”

“Robin –”

“ _That could have been prevented_.”

“Enough Robin,” the rising fury stung his throat and filled his mouth with a coppery tang and his jaw seized in keeping his teeth clenched shut so he wouldn’t say something he’d regret either.

“Chrom –”

“Enough!”

Lucina’s eyes are still trapped on Chrom’s mark and she says, “I still don’t feel like I can believe it. This war’s still happening and Validar’s still on Plegia’s throne. I know mother’s upset, but grand trends are still in motion and I … I don’t know how much what I say can change our position. I lost you two so soon and I’m afraid if I tell mother, I’ll lose everything even faster. You know how she is, she’s relentless once a goal’s placed in front of her and if I tell her about the speculations we drew in the future past, I fear she’ll accelerate events.”

Chrom slips his gloves back on, swords long abandoned, and asks her, “Why do you think events will accelerate?”

“Father, do you recall how Laurent leapt back further than the rest of us? In those additional years, he noticed a worrying trend. In our time, a wave of sinister soulmarks spread over the land like a plague, until nearly everyone had a similar mark, especially among the young. They weren’t exactly the same, but over and over, the marks came in unmistakable.” Lucina hesitates, then slips off her own left glove. “Six eyes. Over and over, people’s marks stabilized into symbols and images of six eyes.”

A teal songbird clutching a burning branch stares at Chrom with a cocked head, three pairs of eyes piercing him, unseeing.

“It’s Grima. Grima who kills all those people, who extinguishes all those lives like a gust of wind plunges a room full of candles into darkness. And Laurent saw these marks starting to form again in this timeline, too early.”

Death marks.

 _Recognize me?_ the bird’s eyes tease him.

* * *

Chrom and Robin’s first argument had been about the risks the other kept flinging themselves into. The second argument had been about Robin’s soulmark, or rather her insistence of not having one.

“I don’t understand,” he’d pleaded. He shook Robin’s bared hand and her mouth thinned and her eyes narrowed. “I don’t understand, what is this then?”

“I don’t know,” she’d cried back. “I don’t know, I don’t know anything about myself, but Chrom, that can’t be my soulmark, that can’t, it’s too terrible to be my soulmark.”

The eyes were sinister, but there were no other options and confused beyond belief, he demanded, “If you don’t know anything about yourself, then how are you so certain? What is this?”

But she just shook her head in frustrated resignation.

* * *

“May we meet again in a better life.”

More than anything else that’d happened today, more than anything else that’d happened these last few hours, more than anything that’s happened these last few _minutes_ , including getting a spear staff slammed into his side and Robin briefly disappearing and fighting on the back of a _dragon_ , panting and out of breath, this punches the air out of his lungs the hardest, carves out his guts, and strikes his vision with a heavy blow. The burning chaos of the battlefield suddenly muffles though he can still feel the haunting bellows of the Risen clashing against the angry steel of his forces. Everything narrows down to the harsh, red light passing through Robin’s sleeve. His shouts choke, he didn’t expect this, he _isn't_ _ready for this_ –

She smiles and then the world drops out from under Chrom’s feet, quite literally.

A couple years later, a woman unexpectedly accosts Chrom when he’s searching along the western border of Ylisse for a strained and desperate hope. Her Plegian accent clips the end of her words, crimping them into enfolding each other, speaking in a rapid stream of stern vowels and demanding consonants.

“Exalt Chrom, your wife, the late queen, did you ever bury her properly? No one ever gives me a damn straight answer and if you haven’t then you’re an even greater disgrace than your filthy father.”

Chrom flinches from the assault. “We, we’ve done what we could, but her body, we never recovered it, it was lost –”

“ _Lost?!_ ”

The town square around them swiftly empties, the fastest coordinated retreat Chrom ever witnessed and he’d marvel at it if the Plegian woman in front of him didn’t seriously look like she was considering bodily assault as well as verbal. Her hands clench in and out of tight fists and the fury that washes through her eyes is suddenly so familiar – Robin’d looked the same way when a medical regiment was hit by the enemy, a torrential mixture of protective rage and sorrow – it steals all of Chrom’s ability to focus on anything other than grief.

“And I don’t suppose you even know the proper rites,” she snaps.

“Rites?” Chrom asks plaintively, for they _did_ do what they could for Robin along Ylisse’s customs, but he bets with certainty she refers to a different set of rituals.

“The grieving period for her soulmate is hardly over and I see you’re still out and about, so you can’t be her soulmate.”

Oh. The grieving period, a solemn abstinence for five years. Plegia had simmered in a self-imposed muted state for years even while Emmeryn was trying to piece together the wreckage. If Chrom observed the rule, no one would see him outside Ylisstol yet. But the tradition applied to the person designated by soulmarks, to acknowledge and humble with the recognition of a life they shaped passing on.

“Her soulmate isn’t able to observe the rites. They’re dead. I’m sorry, please excuse me.” And Chrom flees with as much dignity as he can.

* * *

The mark distracts her, and Robin still hasn’t sorted out her feelings on its existence, hidden all this time under her brand. After waking up in that field, back where it all began, she hadn’t noticed the silvery pale pattern at first. Lissa’d gasped and pointed, dragging at her hand and held it against the orange sunset light and like a scar left behind by her brand, an imprint of the six eyes gazed out.

“Is that?” Robin asked around her dried out throat.

“It’s like a ghost,” Lissa said.

“Yes, let it be the ghost of Grima finally laid to rest,” Frederick declared, settling that matter.

“Well, what do you know,” Robin said, bewildered, and leaned into Chrom’s hold.

**Author's Note:**

> can you tell how aroace I am


End file.
